A blog commenting on various aspects of the private collecting and trade in archaeological artefacts today and their effect on the archaeological record.

Thursday, 29 December 2016

HSI corruption revealed in US

We are all familiar with the rants of US-based dugup antiquities dealers and their lobbyists claiming that all the 'brown-skinned folk' of the source countries from which come the antiquities they handle are ruled by bad unamerican governments and administered by corrupt officials and that is why the citizens of such countries 'deserve' to have their heritage robbed away to feed the US market. While trying to comprehend the vastness of the logic-gap in such two wrongs arguments, we might also take a closer look at the imagined paradise these short-sighted, self-interested, xenophobic, orientalist, Trump-supporting, transatlantic hate-mongerers think they live in (Ron Nixon, 'The Enemy Within: Bribes Bore a Hole in the U.S. Border', December 28the, 2016).

A review by The New York Times of thousands of court records and internal agency documents showed that over the last 10 years almost 200 employees and contract workers of the Department of Homeland Security have taken nearly $15 million in bribes while being paid to protect the nation’s borders and enforce immigration laws.
These employees have looked the other way as tons of drugs and thousands of undocumented immigrants were smuggled into the United States, the records show. [...] The Times’s findings most likely undercount the amount of bribes because in many cases court records do not give a tally. The findings also do not include gifts, trips or money stolen by Homeland Security employees.
Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald J. Trump said border security would be one of his highest priorities. As he prepares to take office, he will find that many of the problems seem to come from within.[...] Records show that Border Patrol officers and customs agents, who protect
more than 7,000 miles of the border and deal most directly with drug
cartels and smugglers, have taken the most in bribes, about $11 million.

One might ask what the cost has been for getting so many unpapered artefacts to 'surface' out of nowhere onto the US market, and who might be paying for that. It takes two to do a corrupt deal,

Obviously the dealers' lobbyist argument applies here too, they'd say HSI employees in the US need to be paid a living wage, making such 'subsistence corruption' unnecessary. The rest of us feel however that such simplistic arguments and suggested 'solutions' have very little merit.

Vibgnette: A 'wall' is only secure when the people policing it are incorruptible.

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About Me

British archaeologist living and working in Warsaw, Poland. Since the early 1990s (or even longer) a primary interest has been research on artefact hunting and collecting and the market in portable antiquities in the international context and their effect on the archaeological record.

Abbreviations used in this blog

"coiney" - a term I use for private collector of dug up ancient coins, particularly a member of the Moneta-L forum or the ACCG

"heap-of-artefacts-on-a-table-collecting" the term rather speaks for itself, an accumulation of loose artefacts with no attempt to link each item with documented origins. Most often used to refer to metal detectorists (ice-cream tubs-full) and ancient coin collectors (Roman coins sold in aggregated bulk lots)